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| Marvin Robinson |
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 200 lbs.
High school: Winter Haven (FL) Lake Region
Position: Safety
Class: Junior
Jersey number: #3
Last year: I ranked Robinson #31 and said he would be a backup safety and special teams contributor. He played in five games, making 9 total tackles.
Another in the line of guys who should never have burned their shirts made of red, Robinson made all of 3 tackles in 2010 and then 9 in 2011. Part of the reason he didn't make more tackles in 2011 was that he got into a wee bit of legal trouble that made the coaches unhappy, which limited him to playing in less than half the games. Now a stud safety recruit enters his true junior season having played sparingly and with a dozen tackles under his belt.
Robinson played well in the spring game, and he looked okay at times last season. He looks to be a viable candidate to take over for Jordan Kovacs in 2013 as a guy who doesn't have a ton of ability to cover downfield but should be a solid tackler and blitzer. In the meantime, he's a good special teams player and a solid backup safety. If he can stay out of the doghouse, I think Michigan fans will like what they see in a limited capacity this season.
Prediction: Backup strong safety, special teams contributor
Thanks Magnus/Thunder. This is a great series.
ReplyDeleteI think the other reason he is in the doghouse is that he missed his assignment in UTL which led to ND's final score. although one would think that could eventually be forgiven if there were no extenuating circumstances.
mgoblog user WeisstheHutt
I think blown assignments can be forgiven if they're mental mistakes and not from a lack of effort. Robinson's mistake against ND was a mental one, so I think the coaches can forgive him if he shows that he learned from it.
DeleteThis is how it's supposed to go - a top notch all conference caliber senior with a promising backup waiting to take over.
ReplyDeleteBesides the fact that the starter is a walk-on, that is. But Kovacs has risen above that status.
Hope you are right about MRob. Practice observers either hype him as a guy being on the cusp of great things or criticize him as guy who plays like an awkward LB in space. I have not seen him enough to form an opinion.
ReplyDeleteOne odd thing is that people talk about him being a big guy, but he does not look particularly big to me on the field. I feel like he blends in with the other DB's out there, most of whom are small. Furman looks much bigger to me. Maybe my eyes are deceiving me. Not a big deal either way.
He's pretty solid but he's only a shade over 200 lbs. I think there's a lingering assumption that he's big because of the days when we were told he was a 6'3", 220 lb. monster coming out of high school.
DeleteThis is a great feature, and also a frightening one. Anyone who doubts how much RichRod screwed this program over should look at this countdown. The presence of guys like Jeremy Jackson and Terrence Talbott in the Top 40 is evidence that the guy left the underclassman cupboard totally bare. I think that we need to brace ourselves for a shitty 2013. 2012 could go down the tubes too with a few injuries in the wrong places.
ReplyDeleteSpare me. There are many, many valid critiques of Rich Rod but 'bare cupboard' isn't one of them. You don't go 11-2 and win a sugar bowl in your first year with a bare cupboard - only a few of those guys were not RR's and even if they weren't he coached them for 3 years. Denard, Fitz, and that OL are a top 20 offense nationally, no matter who the WRs are. Borges, a very good OC, has totally changed his schemes to fit the talent that RR left behind. Now, you wanna talk defense - fine, but a lot of the attrition that came wouldn't have occurred if RR got to stick around. Jake Ryan, Blake Countess, Des Morgan, Craig Roh, Will Campbell, Black, etc - these are guys who committed to Rodriguez - and despite being recruited to play in a different scheme, they're damn good players.
Delete2013 might be a struggle, the OL depth is non-existent and the presumed conversion to pro-style might be difficult if Gardner is forced into a system he can't thrive in, the defense is going to pay for all the attrition that has occurred but you know what - the 2012 and 2013 recruiting classes have been very strong. Michigan's going to do alright. Time to move on from the Rodriguez era and not keep making excuses and accusations.
Rodriguez didn't get a free pass his third season in for what Carr left him and neither will Hoke.
Several of the main cogs of last year's team were Carr's: Molk, Van Bergen, Martin, Huyge, etc. I don't think Rodriguez left the cupboard totally bare, but the lack of depth on the OL, at WR, on the DL, and in the defensive backfield is Rodriguez's burden to bear. And while I agree that Rodriguez should have gone ahead and installed the spread, that set the program back; meanwhile, Hoke adjusted to his personnel and ran a lot of spread stuff. If Michigan struggles in 2012, I think a fair amount of blame could justifiably be aimed in Rodriguez's direction.
DeleteRodriguez mismanaged his defense atrociously. He hired bad coaches. He prioritized the wrong things. He failed to teach defensive fundamentals. He made screwy decisions about positions. He chose his words poorly. And... he lost WAY TOO MANY football games! But he's not to blame for the 2011 recruiting class not meeting every need on Hoke's teams. The transition costs are the program's to own, not Rodriguez's.
DeleteThe lack of OL depth this year is primarily because Hoke couldn't find a replacement for Jake Fisher (who decommitted after Rodriguez was fired), couldn't retain Tony Posado (though it seems unlikely he would have worked for anyone), and because he (supposedly) didn't ask Khoury back. Rodriguez already showed he could replenish a decimated OL very quickly in his first recruiting class and could find elite talent in his second - his OL recruiting was absolutely stellar. He didn't recruit enough in 2010 because he didn't need to - he already had a bunch of good young linemen, he had to focus on other priorities (defense), and he would have been justified in being confident in his recruiting the following class. No one can say what the 2012 OL depth would look like under Rodriguez, let alone the 2013 team. But add Jake Fisher and Rocko Khoury to the 2012 team and the OL looks just fine.
Ditto for WR, where Hoke decided not to recruit anyone in 2011 and turned away a 4-star WR recruit -- somehow that's Rodriguez's fault in your world. Even with his job on the line Rodriguez was attracting attention from plenty of WR recruits including Sammy Watkins. More importantly, lets not forget that Roundtree was a record-breaking receiver as a sophomore under Rodriguez and Gallon was tailor-made for the system as well. It's ridiculous to argue that Rodriguez didn't leave behind offensive talent. Even with massive attrition and not finishing his 2011, a loaded offense remains almost 2 years later - with no significant contributors from Hoke or Carr.
DL - Roh, Campbell, Washington, Ash, Black, Wilkins, Paskorz (now a TE) were brought in during Rodriguez's two classes and still make up the bulk of the DL personnel. Even after the attrition that took place - that's plenty of depth for the 3-man lines Rodriguez wanted to use. 2011 was going to bring Beyer and assuredly others but he got canned. Also, Martin signed on to be coached by Rodriguez. He may have been recruited by Carr but he knew the situation he was signing up for. He chose to play for Rodriguez over plenty of national-caliber alternatives.
If you're not going to credit Rodriguez for 2011 than it's ridiculous to (potentially) blame him for 2012. Especially since the main difference between 2011 and 2012 (the schedule difficulty) was something he played no role in whatsoever. Either he's a factor or he isn't, he can't ONLY be a bad factor, because you happen to dislike or disrespect the guy.
Shorter response: If Denard is in your cupboard - it ain't bare!
DeleteRodriguez DID need to take more than one OL in 2010. Obviously. Even if Posada and Fisher were around, they would only be sophomores/RS freshmen. And Fisher said he wanted to play in a spread offense.
DeleteRodriguez didn't know what he wanted on the DL. He might have wanted 3 linemen, but he hired 4-3 guys, so yeah, I'm going to blame him for under-recruiting the DL. And so far just about every one of his DL recruits has been mediocre, with the lone possible exception of Roh.
This year and 2013 are really going to be tests of Rodriguez's recruiting.
Not obvious, and I disagree. Having second year linemen (Posada/Fisher) as backups is fine, especially if your starters are all-conference caliber. Khoury, Bryant, and Mealer would be fine as backup interior linemen, even if one of them starts. That gives you a strong veteran group of starters, non-freshman 2-deep at nearly every position, plus 2012 recruits red-shirting - sounds pretty good. Re Fisher, yeah - Rodriguez ran a spread, which is why if he stuck around Fisher would have too. Again, this situation is not Rodriguez's problem. If there's one thing Rodriguez didn't mess up it's his own offense. Seriously...
ReplyDeleteRegarding, DL and the 4-3 coaches - yeah. Again, Rodriguez's stupid hiring decisions are not a recruiting issue they're a management issue.
His DL recruits have been mediocre, that much is true so far, but it's not an issue of depth or talent (the guys he took had plenty of impressive offers from other schools), it's player development, strategy, and everything else. The guys he was taking are guys most schools with decent coaches can work with. He just didn't hire coaches who could do anything with them. Look at the difference in how good the D looked last year compared to the year before. Those are mostly Rodriguez's guys. Yes, Martin and Van Bergen stepped up their games and a ton of people got healthy - but coaching played a big role too. The talent wasn't optimal but it wasn't a 'bare cupboard' either.
2013 - when his final class (Devin Gardner's) are seniors and have been coached by Hoke for 3 years, and when most of the team never even spoke with the guy - that says very little about Rodriguez and that is only related to the high level talent he produced. Just as the 2010 team said very little about Carr. There's going to be some culpability on the previous coach if the team lacks the raw material to succeed. but that responsibility decreases exponentially with each passing year. Rodriguez had a great deal of influence on 2011. He'll have a significant influence on 2012. By 2013 his blame/credit is going to be limited to how good the upperclassmen are. If those upperclassmen including 10-12 quality starters (Gardner, Schofield, Lewan, Hopkins, Toussaint, Gallon, J.Robinson, Dileo, Black, Ryan, M.Robinson) despite a very rough transition any argument about bare cupboard will be ridiculous.
You can't take one offensive lineman in a class. You just can't. Especially when that class is 27 men strong. It's not like we only had 15 scholarships. Five of the 22 starting positions (23%) are offensive linemen, yet he allotted less than 4% of his scholarships to the offensive line. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
DeleteThe 2010 team DID say quite a bit about Carr's recruiting abilities. You have to account for guys who departed due to the coaching change (Clemons, Mallett, etc.) and shrug your shoulders, but the guys who were left in 2010 had a huge impact on the team (Mouton, Schilling, Molk, Martin, etc.).
"You don't go 11-2 and win a sugar bowl in your first year with a bare cupboard - only a few of those guys were not RR's"
ReplyDeleteA lot of the guys were not RR's. Huyge, Hemmingway, Molk, Martin, van Bergen, Demens, Floyd, Koger are guys that come to mind. The guys who were RR's were almost entirely guys that he recruited in his first 12 months, and most of those were guys on offense. Guys like Lewan, Schofield, Denard, Fitz, Roundtree, Roh, and Big Will. That was RichRod's only good recruiting period. Most of thsoe guys are going to be gone after this year. That leaves us with the 2010 and 2011 classes as the ones carrying the weight, and for the most part, they were really bad and horribly lacking in talented WRs, O-linemen, and DTs. The idiot Dave Brandon bears some responsibility for the 2011 class with his dumbass "process", but the 2010 class is all on RichRod. He was out recruiting the Drew Dileos and DJ Williamsons of the world while his defense was busy getting shredded. His solution to having terrible DBs was to bring in the likes of Ray Vinopal and Greg Brown. He lost recruiting battles to the likes of Iowa and Michigan State. As I said in my post above, the presence of so many MAC caliber players in the Top 40 of this countdown speaks volumes. The team will suffer for it in 2013, when there will be virtually no talented upperclassman linemen on the team.
@Anon,
DeleteFloyd, Martin, Demens, Koger signed with Rodriguez. Huyge, Hemingway, Molk, Van Bergen - OK, that's 4 starters out of 22, with Rodriguez delivering the 18 others. The 2011 class was signed by Hoke, not Rodriguez.
The people starting on the 2011 team SHOULD be dominated by recruits from 2009 and 2008, but there were only a handful of Carr's '08 guys and they were only there because being linemen (standard to red-shirt) or getting hurt (Hemingway).
Rodriguez filled out his '09 class reasonably well despite the transition. The '11 class was signed to Hoke, not Rodriguez. Neither guy deserves credit or blame for that class. Rodriguez was left to blow in the wind and Hoke wasn't left enough time to salvage the damage.
Now, if you want get into arguing about attrition and how productive the 2010 class is, fine, but that's TBD. We're talking about a class that came in off two awful years but was still ranked 19th (on average) in the country (Carr's '02 class was 18th) - fairly low by Michigan standards (5-15 range). These are 3rd year players who went through a big transition early in their careers.
The 2011 class is on Brandon, not Rodriguez (who was going to get a lot more than what the class finished with), and not Hoke (who simply had no time to fix things.)
In 2013, the starting defense will likely include Marvin Robinson (by no means a MAC-level recruit) and Jibreel Black (offers from ACC, Big East, SEC, Wisc, MSU, etc) and MAYBE a couple other highly recruited players like Furman and Ash. Jake Ryan IS a MAC-caliber recruit. Courtney Avery is a decent player too. Still, you're talking about 4 starters, most likely, not including Morgan, Countess, and Beyer ('11 recruits who committed to Rodriguez). Still, compare the number of starter 3 years later to what Rodriguez had left over from Carr (thought that was mostly a bare cupboard offensively, whereas Rodriguez's problems fell on the other side of the ball).
Look, we can each sit here and cherry-pick recruits who did or didn't pan out. But you have to acknowledge that costs of a transition aren't directly Rodriguez's responsibility. The man got 2 and a half recruiting classes at Michigan. He made plenty of mistakes - but that's recruiting.
Hoke's contribution to the 2011 class (9 guys who Rodriguez did not recruit) has already had Barnett leave, Clark get in legal trouble, Poole get hurt, and accusations of Carter being a 'MAC level' talent.
Rodriguez's recruiting class in '08 and '09 were pretty strong: ranked 10th and 11th in the country - exactly Carr's average from '02 to '07. 2010, he took a step back when the losses piled up, and that was a weak class, but nothing out of the realm of reason. Still good players there.
Was recruiting great - no. Of course not. Not with the team flailing like that. But on the list of problems for Rodriguez - bringing in talent doesn't make the top 10. And the man brought in EXCELLENT talent on offense - that's a big reason why the team was good last year and why it will be good again this year.
The cupboard wasn't bare. It wasn't well-stocked enough to handle the 10-11 transition 'winter' without some grumbling, but there's enough to get through and thrive in the 'spring'.
9 times out of 10 - I'd agree with you. But you have to remember the circumstances - Rodriguez had just knocked the last 2 OL classes out of the park and had to take a huge class to recover from what Carr had left over in '08. He took 10 guys across 3 classes - that's not a problem, especially when they were proving reliable and were going to be around through 2011-2013. And I've been arguing for more OL recruits as loudly as anyone, but no one puts 23% of their scholarships on the OL. Finally, your 4% number is completely silly - look at something actually meaningful - like the number of scholarships he gave to OLmen on his roster - and it was completely rational. Just like Hoke, he was dealt a certain hand and had to adjust the roster to fill needs where appropriate. Hoke took a ton of DL and LBs in the last class at the expense of QB, in 2011 he took no WRs and took just 2 the next year - because his current roster already had a ton of them. That's how it works - it's not a perfect world where you just take 1 guy for each position every year and go 4 deep perfectly, by class.
ReplyDeleteAs for 2010, the exceptions prove the rule. You can list the Carr holdovers who stuck around all you want but look the majority of the team, especially non-starting underclassmen where Rodriguez guys. There's an argument before it, but by 2010 that was Rodriguez's team, almost entirely. He didn't get fired for Carr's recruiting classes. He got fired because his players didn't play well enough.
Now, you can make the case that Carr screwed him with the talent that was left behind in 2008 and 2009, but not 2010. Maybe the hole that was dug was too big to get out of, but that's obviously not the case for Hoke given what we saw in 2011.
I'm not saying he should put 23% of his scholarships into the OL. What I'm saying is that 4% is way off where it should have been. Michigan lost 3 offensive linemen after the 2009 season (Moosman, McAvoy, Ortmann), and 3 more were going to be gone after the 2010 season (Schilling, Dorrestein, Ferrara). His response was to take 1 offensive lineman in the 2010 class (Pace) and hand out scholarships to Conelius Jones, Antonio Kinard, Jordan Paskorz, Davion Rogers, Austin White, and DJ Williamson. Pace got hurt, and 100% of that OL class was decimated. The end.
DeleteNow those 2010 kids would be redshirt sophomores and potentially starting at left guard, or they would be preparing to take over for Barnum, Omameh, and potentially Lewan/Mealer next season.
We have very little depth on the offensive line right now. That's Rodriguez's fault. It is. There's no way around it. I'm sorry you don't see it, but it's true. I'm not going to continue arguing the obvious.
You are wrong. Flat out. You can sit here and talk about Kinard and Rogers all you want but it ignores the recruits that actually matter to OL depth - like Jake Fisher. Fisher is getting rave reviews from Oregon fans. He was committed to Rodriguez until Rodriguez was fired. Hoke couldn't keep him and didn't replace. Blaming that on Rodriguez is flat out wrong.
DeleteOT: Lewan, Schofield, Fisher
OG: Omameh, Mealer, Bryant
OC: Barnum, Khoury
Not counting any freshman or walk-ons that's an OL that goes 8 deep. AND its a very good one.
You want to talk about the OL depth 3 years AFTER Rodriguez is fired - OK, but just realize how ridiculous it sounds to demand depth when you don't have a chance to recruit.
You're right. One guy (Jake Fisher) would solve all of our depth problems. Damn you, Brady Hoke! Why couldn't you run a spread offense so Jake Fisher would have stayed committed?!?!?! Why?!?!?!
DeleteAin't Hoke's fault either. Can't blame either coach for the transition problems. If it were up to Hoke, he'd have been hired in 2008. If it were up to Rodriguez he'd still be coaching this team.
DeleteTwo guys (Fisher and Khoury) WOULD fix the OL's depth issues in 2012. Your sarcasm is unwarranted.